According to two recent studies, vulnerable spots on Antarctica’s massive Thwaites Glacier are melting due to warm water. Nature just published two study publications that describe melting. Thirteen American and British scientists worked together to conduct the investigation that produced the research findings. In late 2019 and early 2020, teams stayed on the glacier for roughly six weeks. To gather data, the researchers employed an underwater robot vehicle fitted with sensors and instruments. The grounding line of the glacier, or the point at which glacial ice is supported by water instead of land, could be measured.
Britney Schmidt, a biologist at Cornell University, led one of the publications. According to her, the warmer water was seeping into terraces and other openings, causing sideways melt that amounted to at least thirty meters annually. According to Schmidt, “Warm water is getting into the weakest parts of the glacier and making it worse,” as reported by Reuters. Regarding the most recent discoveries, she stated, “That is the kind of thing we should all be very concerned about.”
The Thwaites Glacier collapse “represents more than half a meter of global sea-level-rise,” according to Schmidt’s paper. It might also affect circumstances that cause the sea level to increase by three meters over a period of several hundred years. Schmidt also contributed to the results of the other publication. That study revealed a melt rate of almost five meters per year close to the glacier’s grounding line. This amount was less than what the most aggressive thinning scientific potential models had indicated. Schmidt, though, acknowledged that the melting was still quite worrying. “If we observe less melting…that doesn’t change the fact that it’s retreating,” she stated.
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